JOB DESCRIPTION

This specific Lero program is focused on building software systems in a trustworthy, responsible and efficient manner and, within that context, targets several software engineering issues of concern to our industrial partner. Consequently, the positions are in the following research areas.

• Inner Source: the application of the open source development paradigm within and organisation.
• Software Product Trustworthiness Measurement: derivation of measures for trustworthy-software attributes like security, privacy, reliability.
• The Developer “Software Development Experience”: to assess software tools for their congruence with developer’s tasks and the information needs underpinning those tasks.
• Open Source Software Clone Detection: to provide advance analysis techniques for detection of type III and IV clones, providing higher recall and precision.

The successful applicants will be key members of the project team with special responsibilities for researching these areas, deriving approaches to the identified issues, deriving associated practices or tooling associated with those approaches and subsequent evaluation/refinement of those approaches in conjunction with our industrial collaborators. Thus, it is expected that they will.

• Conduct the specified programme of research and scholarship under the supervision and direction of the Principal Investigator.
• Perform literature reviews in the associated areas.
• Research novel approaches to address the software engineering issues of concern, based on the academic literature reviewed, and embody those approaches in organisational processes, practices or tooling.
• Perform empirical evaluations of these approaches, often in-situ.
• Interact professionally with our industrial partners to act on their feedback, towards refinement of these approaches.
• Engage in the (peer and out-reach) dissemination of the results of the research.
• Engage in the wider research and scholarly activities of your research group and centre.

Additionally, appointees at the Research Fellow level will be expected to:

• Support the Principal Investigator and research group in the ongoing refinement and development of the research programme.
• Mentor and monitor researchers on that team.
• Generate new ideas and links and build upon existing ideas in areas of software engineering to generate unique concepts and solutions.

CRITERIA:

Essential Criteria:

• A doctoral degree (level 10 NFQ) in computer science, software engineering or a closely related discipline. (Evidence that all the requirements for that degree have been fulfilled must be provided. The candidate need not necessarily have graduated yet for the post-doctoral researcher positions. Please give date of viva).
• A proven ability to publish at journal or conference level.
• Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.

Additional Essentials Criteria at Research Fellow Level

• One year post doctoral experience working/researching in software engineering process, requirements, architecture, design, development, evolution or software analysis.
• A proven ability to determine and fulfil academic writing requirements for target publications at both journal and conference level.
• A proven track-record of supervising/mentoring researchers/post-graduate students.

Desirable Criteria

• Experience of researching approaches that address software engineering concerns.
• Experience designing/developing software engineering processes, practices or software tooling/visualisations.
• Experience of working with industrial partners.
• Empirical design and evaluation skills.
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Additionally, Desirable Criteria at the Research Fellow Level

• A proven ability to generate new ideas and links, and to build upon existing ideas to generate unique concepts and solutions in the area of software engineering.
• A proven record of leadership with team members and PhD students to help build their research skill and knowledge and to support and guide their professional development.
• A demonstrated ability to understand a project’s operational and research requirements towards successful completion of that project and successful resource management within that project.

Please include the following information in your application

• The full title of your PhD thesis.
• A description of any research experience you may have had since your PhD.
• A full list of publications, including web-links to those publications.

Salary:

Post-Doctoral Researcher €37,874 - € 49,048 p.a. pro rata
Research Fellow €54,717 - €59,622 p.a. pro rata

To apply for this position and for further Information for Candidates:

Click Here

We offer an opportunity to join an exciting project entitled Death and Burial Data: Ireland 1864-1922 (DBDIrl) in an interdisciplinary team led by Dr. Ciara Breathnach (History) and co-supervised by Professor Tiziana Margaria (Computer Science) and taking research, design and development responsibilities within its Computer Science and Software aspects. Funded by the Irish Research Council Laureate Award 2017-22, this project is located at the nexus of digital and medical humanities, with a strong reliance on advanced data science support. You will work as part of a multidisciplinary team drawn from the specialisms of History, Digital Data Archives and Linked Data as well as Computer Science.

DBDIrl examines the relationship between historical death registration data and burial data to explore the history of power in Ireland from 1864 to 1922. By aligning both data collections from several big data archives at the individual level DBDIrl aims to identify and understand the discrepancies that exist between them and to shed light on the individual, their family life, health, and histories.

The role of this PhD student will be in the research, design and development needed to build a new generation data management platform for the digital humanities. It needs to be robust and easily evolvable, so that it can include over time all the services needed for modern and future data archives. They will provide data access, analysis, and facilitate its use in various applications, like for example comparison of historical data and modern data.

Given an appropriate profile of the candidate, an affiliation with Lero – the Irish Research Centre on Software is possible.

It offers a 16,000 Euro stipend, fees and funding for conferencing.

Essential pre-requisites:

1. A degree (level 8 NFQ – 1st class or MSc) in Computer Science or similar disciplines
2. Excellent interpersonal, communication and organizational skills
3. Ability to work as part of an inter-disciplinary team.
4. Knowledge and experience in three or more of the following areas:
   • Ontologies, linked data or similar domain description techniques
   • Data science/analytics, information system design and development
   • Development in Java and other programming languages/paradigms
   • Familiarity and experience of Model Driven Design and Development concepts and tools
   • Familiarity with agile software development, agile project management, DevOps
   • User interface design (HCI, UX), web development (Angular JS or equivalent)

Desirable competences:

1. Demonstrated experience and understanding of digital humanities requirements.
2. Evidence of report writing skills
3. Experience of co-writing and co-researching articles.
4. Publications/and conference papers in HCI, software modeling or programming, or Digital Humanities

Please include the following information in your application:

1. A CV,
2. A cover letter describing how you meet the specification, with a description of your previous software development experience,
3. Full transcript of records of your university-level studies so far,
4. Proof of sufficient English skills (either as a native English speaker or provide an IELTS standard of 6.5 (with a minimum of 6 in all categories) or equivalent certificate),
5. Previous publications or previous significant work (thesis, final year project, or similar). Links to an online free access repository are sufficient.

The University of Limerick (UL) with over 16,300 students and 1,400 staff is an energetic and enterprising institution with a proud record of innovation and excellence in education, research and scholarship. The dynamic, entrepreneurial and pioneering values which drive UL’s mission and strategy ensures that we capitalise on local, national and international engagement and connectivity. We are renowned for providing an outstanding student experience and employability and conducting leading edge research. Our commitment is to make a difference by shaping the future through educating and empowering our undergraduate and postgraduate students. UL is situated on a superb riverside campus of over 130 hectares with the River Shannon as a unifying focal point. Outstanding recreational, cultural and sporting facilities further enhance this exceptional learning and research environment.

You will join the DBDIrl research group, and work in collaboration with the specialists (PhD and Postdocs) in History, Digital Data Archives and Linked Data as well as other PhD students and Postdoctoral fellows in the Software System research group, working on model driven development, service oriented computing, Formal Methods, AI and data science, and Security and privacy. The co-supervisors are affiliated with Lero (www.lero.ie) and the HRI (https://www.ul.ie/hri/), various group members are affiliated with Confirm (https://confirm.ie), the ALECS EU Co-fund programme (https://alecs.lero.ie), and the CRT in AI (http://crt-ai.cs.ucc.ie).

CS Background and Goals: The data management of curated digital data collections, and in particular big data, in the digital humanities is emerging as a powerful tool to make these data available to a much wider range of researchers, policy and decision makers, and general users. To make this happen, digital platforms need to be simple to use and to change, secure and efficient to use, respect the evolving data protection and legal frameworks, and have the ability to evolve and interconnect with new, heterogeneous data collections and analysis capabilities that are unknown at the conception time.

For this new paradigm to enter mainstream, models need to be coupled with automatic transformations, generations, and analyses that take advantage of the formalized knowledge about the immaterial and material entities, and the individuals involved in the research. This formalized knowledge includes a variety of models together with Domain Specific Languages that use semantic types at their core.

In this project, the CS team researches the underlying software and system-level challenges, and builds demonstrators of how the new thinking can disrupt the status quo but empower a better understanding. This is achieved by offering a more efficient organization and a more automated management of the many cross-dimensional issues that future digital humanities platforms - with big data, connected software and systems - will depend upon.

For informal inquiries contact Ciara.breathnach@ul.ie

Closing date: Please submit by Friday 12pm GMT, 20 March 2020 to the following email address: DBDIrl@ul.ie.